Donald Trump and all his family boycotted Joe Biden’s inauguration four years ago. Trump was the first outgoing president to deliberately snub his successor in this way for 150 years. On Monday, Biden will be braving the cold on stage outside the US Capitol, paying due respect to the constitution as Trump is sworn in.
Biden’s acquiescence sums up his presidency. In his own inauguration speech in 2021 he set out to do the right things for “the cause of democracy” and to “restore the soul” of America. He is ending his term handing over to the man who trashed the normal decencies of office and has been re-elected vowing to do it again.
If Trump puts his autocratic impulses in to effect, future historians may even conclude that Biden was the last truly democratic president of the United States. Trump and the end of liberal democracy in America could be Biden’s legacy.
At times in his wild and rambling campaign speeches, Trump has toyed with the idea himself. He has said he will be a “dictator” when he gets back into office, but only for the first day. That is when he is expected to issue a slew of pardons for the “patriots” and “hostages” who rioted on 6 January, 2021.
He told his supporters in July last year that they would not need to vote again once he was elected, that it will be “fixed”. When pressed for clarity on these remarks by Fox News, Trump repeated them but denied it meant that he would permanently stay in office.
In true Trump fashion he often deflected too. He called Biden “the most corrupt president in history” and claimed – with no evidence – to be the saviour while “Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy”.
Biden is leaving behind a robust economy, which recovered more quickly than other countries from Covid. He enacted more reforms in four years than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama managed in their two terms. His $1.5trn budget stimulus is a big step to rebuilding crumbling infrastructure and make the US a world leader with green technology.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, Biden did not get that message across to American voters, who were preoccupied by the cost of living and inflation.
Now Trump is going back into the White House with the power to grub up many of Biden’s green shoots. It is no comfort that, in a farewell message full of foreboding, Biden says he fears “powerful forces want to wield their unchecked influence… we must not be bullied into sacrificing the future”.
Biden must take the blame for Trump winning a second time. When Biden ran in 2020 he was already asking to be the oldest ever president and he gave the impression that he would be a one-term president, a bridge to a new generation of progressive leaders.
Once in the White House he persuaded himself that he was the only candidate who could beat Trump again, even though he was doomed. At the start of the 2024 election year, 86 per cent of Americans, including 73 per cent of Democrats, thought he was too old to be re-elected.
Nancy Pelosi, political veteran and former House speaker, believes that the Democrats would have chosen a more electable candidate – or made Kamala Harris look more credible – had there been an open primary season. To this day Biden stubbornly insists that he would have beaten Trump, in spite of a total absence of evidence to back him up.
Articulate, gaffe-free speaking was never the greatest talent of Biden, but last year he found himself up against one of the best and most unorthodox communicators in world politics. Biden’s befuddled debate against Trump in June allowed Trump to play the carer, muttering sympathetically: “I don’t know what he said there and I don’t think he knows either.”
Worse, as Biden’s powers ebbed with age, his advisers tried to keep him away from unscripted public appearances. Trump roamed unchallenged across the new media of X, Facebook and Truth Social and made frequent appearances on podcast shows.
There are two sorts of democracies, liberal and illiberal. A liberal democracy is the one we would generally recognise and consider the United States to be a model of. Power frequently changes hands at many levels through fair elections. In Biden’s words, “The idea of America means respecting the institutions that govern a free society – the presidency, the Congress, the courts, a free and independent press… our system of separation of powers, checks and balances”.
Trump openly disrespects every one of these institutions. He has threatened “retribution” and the use of military action against political opponents.
This is not the Donald Trump Israel expected
Read MoreEven allowing for bombast, president Trump only respects democracy if it is “illiberal democracy” in which decisions rest on the will of one person in power who is largely unaccountable to anyone else.
Illiberal autocrats and their supporters invariably try to consolidate their position by manipulating the democratic system. The authoritative Brookings Institution reports that “the United States is experiencing democratic erosion”. It points to gerrymandering and voter suppression by state governments and the growth of executive power threatening civil service independence and judicial impartiality.
In his last term Trump politicised the US Supreme Court, seizing the opportunity to appoint three partisan far-right justices, rather than attempt to follow precedent by selecting the greatest legal minds. The court duly granted the president immunity from criminal prosecution for his “official acts”. British jurists say this amounts to making him an absolute monarch.
Meanwhile, the planned “DoGE”, or Department of Government Efficiency, which is to be co-headed by Elon Musk, is designed to extend politicisation deep into America’s federal bureaucracy. Thousands of impartial workers will likely be sacked and many more posts will become political appointments.
Trump won the election in 2025 fairly. There is no denying that many voters share his anti-democratic instincts. Only a minority of voters say they are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the US. Among Republicans, only one in four approve.
All this is being turbocharged, according to Biden’s farewell address, because “America is being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power”.
Without naming Musk or the other billionaires in the “tech-industrial complex” now bowing to Trump, Biden is leaving the White House warning of a new existential danger to American democracy from “robber barons”.
“An oligarchy is taking shape in America,” he complained to his fellow citizens, “of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
It’s too late now for you, Joe, and perhaps for liberal democracy in America. You did nothing to curb American tech when you were in the White House and you didn’t stop Trump either.
Adam Boulton presents Sunday Morning on Times Radio
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